Inside lie scores of pulpy dead,
Remaindered fiction, stripped.
Un-bought, unsold, unloved, unread,
By more modern works eclipsed.
Covers torn off, sent back only
For the refund price
Authors' children, bleeding, lonely
Corpses worried at by mice.

Untapped sheaves of strange imaginings
Scattered in a careless arc;
Rustling in the wind that fall brings
As bonfire leaves that wait a spark.
A spear of moonbeam through a skylight
Hits a stack of books below
A page picked out as by a searchlight: The Conqueror Worm by E.A. Poe.

A sharp gust and the pages flutter
As though a ghost paused to peruse;
An eldritch spark runs up the gutter
Fruit of Poe's forgotten muse.
Called from some arcane dimension -
Summoned to take form
A frisson of dramatic tension!
Comes the Conqueror Worm!

Demon Muse-child! Fanged and taloned!
Taking shape in gloom
Dagger-clawed and scale-medallioned!
A horrid birth-cry shakes the room.
Turning on the books that beckoned,
It cracks their spines, on leaves to feed.
More corporeal by the second,
It reaches out to slake its need.

Works of Strieber, Koontz, and King
Consumed to reinforce its might.
Angels cringe to see the Thing, Spawn of evil, rot, and night.
All's ingested, yet the worm stays,
Tethered to its place of birth.
The angels cry out words of great praise.
It can't break free to plague the Earth!

The creature wails! It howls! It rages!
Scrapes its claws across the floor!
Child of one hundred thousand pages,
Needing just one hundred more. Dawn's clear light will bring its ending, Dispel the beast angels abhor.
Abort this Hell-begotten sending -
Wait! There swings the warehouse door!

This now completes the summoning!
The angels cry anew in woe.
The book, pink with gold lettering,
Adjoining Straub, Milton, and Poe.
Completed now, it rears to cry
A ghastly challenge to our Sphere!
Instead, sharp pain beclouds its eye.
It whimpers in its pain and fear.

The creature feels a tremor in
Its mighty literary thews.
One angel rises up and grins!
"Oh cherubim! Attend my news!
The fetid worm has erred indeed
As it will soon discover!
For in its haste it failed to read
That last book's gaudy cover."

Behold! As bones of Koontz and Blake, Vertebrae of Poe and Milton,
Twist cruelly from the beast's mistake:
'Selected Poems by Paris Hilton'
The cries of agonized distress
Diminishing as pages peel
Away from fast-dissolving flesh,
The monster ceases to be real.

The watchman's soul is taken high,
By angels to a better place.
As morning's sun ascends the sky,
Of the beast there is no trace.
Let forth the cry throughout the land,
Celebrate with flags unfurled!
A modern miracle's at hand! Paris Hilton Saves the World!

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i was the worm
snatched from its dew-laden pasture
as others were trampled in the wan glow of a waning quarter moon.

i was the worm
thrown among a blind and faceless throng
in a cardboard shanty,
at the foot of an incipient mudslide,

forced to make its bed in excrement and litter,
to make its diet of mercury and lead,
to efface its anger with the glue used
to repair the shoes of those with feet
and hands that look like bowls of money.

i was the worm shaken from its fever dreams and laid out in the bare light of dawn,
squeezed in two by calloused fingers, cast
in vomit and fear, its own excrement
its own litter.

i feel myself falling away. i feel
the plunge of cold tempered cruelty.

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Viral perpetration of the accepted rites, swill to flow out from the
bottle and spit to flow back in. The worm remains at the bottom.
Cares to be cast out with the demons and the space created
henceforth shall be the seat of discontent. Said he, "I miss my sin.
I send remittance to satan with each breath, razor underneath my
tongue in case I should run across jesus again." In the joint, he pulls
a wishbone with his jailers on thanksgiving. Gets the short end of the
stick and stuck out a month in solitary. It's hard not to stick out
when yr the only one there, but the floor is earth and vermin are
like unto me. In medieval france every castle had an 'oubliette.' As
is the case with most words, this one comes from another--"Oublier." To
forget. They put you there and forgot about you. Most likely you slept,
if you slept at all, on a pile of mouldering bones. I remember them as
a particularly uncomfortable bed; to the vermin bed and occupant are
one and the same feast.

"Tell me truly," sez he upon his return
to the world, "Am I forgotten?" Runs the silent gauntlet as no one
interferes as he walks straight out the prison as he crosses the
dead-grass hangdog yard and the football game does not stop--a clod
fresh from the kickoff flies over his head--as he passes sleepy guards
at rusting gates as he treads for what could have been the first time
upon a dusty road as a bus passes and does not slow down. So he
continues to walk. Walks until the shoes with which he entered prison
(conveniently left outside his cell door as he also left, without a
word in either case) begin to fray and at this time he imagines that it
would be fitting if snow began to fall. But no one is listening and
there is no snow. Not even rain; it was his second choice since he
feels he could use a shower. Walks until the shoes have fallen off and
as they do he reaches a bar. "Garbage in, garbage out" he thinks,
also thinking that garbage would be better than nothing as a thing to
get out of life. Thinks of his position at the bottom of a hole, of a
bottle, of an infernal pecking order. Thinks of a world of hungry
birds and unprotected nightcrawlers after a heavy rain. But there was
no rain. He continues to burrow towards solace and safety. Silence
and anonymity may be blessings here.

A felon walks into a
bar. Silence resounds and he asks, the first he's spoken freely in six
(don't ask why six, it just seemed like the right number) in six in six
in six in six in six years he asks, "What? Did somebody tell a bad
joke?" Confronted with stares. No voices. Worms' only pockets are
of earth and do not contain the likes of keys and cash. Worms get no
free drinks, even when they have just crawled out of prison.